Ministrado por

Patrick Le Galès

Transcrição

"Searching for the Grand Paris" "Towards more social and spatial inequalities?" -We are familiar with social inequalities, the fact that individuals are unequally equipped in economic and cultural capital, and personal networks. We often tend to think that the unequal distribution of this people, given their unequally equipped capital, cultural, economic, etc., is enough to explain what we call "urban" inequalities. But what we have observed is that we have to take into account social inequalities, in the sense of the unequal distribution between individuals, and urban inequalities, which come from the unequal spatial distribution of resources, of other resources which do not depend on individuals, transportation, institutions, private and public services, spaces and environmental quality, and so on. Why is it important to make the distinction? Because it helps us understand situations where groups or individuals who are personally well-equipped live in urban spaces which are not that well-equipped in infrastructure, facilities, transportation, etc. So there can be a disconnect or an amplification of inequalities which comes from the more or less perfect superposition of social and urban inequalities. -To talk about inequalities is very complicated. There can be inequalities in income, health, education, etc. Nowadays, even though the situation is slightly improving, the increase in unemployment is such that income inequalities increased undoubtedly, slightly less and later than in other countries, but income inequalities did increase. In other sectors, new technologies, for instance, health, gender inequalities, they tended to decrease. In education, for instance, we are not quite sure. There are processes of massification as well as an increase in inequalities at the top of the school hierarchy. So, to say that inequalities in general are increasing or decreasing, we have to do a complex study of each sector. Another issue is that, when we talk about inequalities in a given place in France, what does it mean? In the 7th arrondissement, inequalities will be very different from Creuse, Lyon or Marseille. So we have to specify the territory for these inequalities. But we sorely lack serious data to talk about their evolution. We do know that the territory does not matter that much. In a crisis, working classes suffer the consequences the most, especially unskilled workers. They live in large metropolises and around large metropolises, not at their heart, where there are few of them, except for the heart of Marseille, in the suburbs, at the periphery in the north and northeast of Paris, as well as the 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements of Paris. These unskilled workers will suffer the most from the crisis. So these territories will face the most difficulties, without caricaturing and talking about urban ghettos or abandoned territories. The most affected territories house the least skilled workers. -I believe that gentrification is telling us something about the quick transformation of some neighborhoods within Paris. But we should not interpret all transformation dynamics of working-class areas becoming less working-class, and more middle-class or upper-middle-class, based on this one paradigm. We often think about the conquest of working-class spaces which have qualities, because they are well-located or well-perceived by more intellectual or artistic, highly-educated middle classes, who find an opportunity to relocate in attractive spaces at the heart of the city. There are other kinds of transformation for these neighborhoods. In Montreuil, Saint-Denis or Saint-Ouen, for instance, the municipalities attracted a different kind of middle class who may not have this kind of stereotypical relationship with art, culture or journalism, etc., who invest differently in these neighborhoods. This kind of logic is even more obvious in western municipalities, such as Asnières, Suresnes or Nanterre, where middle classes from the private sector, private sector executives, maybe not with a lot of seniority, invest in working-class towns, such as Nanterre. The arrival of these executives in Nanterre is different from the presence of middle classes connected to the art, journalism or culture worlds in some areas of Paris or in the eastern suburbs. It is clear in the inner suburbs, for instance, that some towns increased and favored the dynamics for the transformation of such working-class towns, including, historically, and it may seem strange, towns such as Levallois-Perret, Courbevoie, Suresnes, Issy-les-Moulineaux, parts of Boulogne-Billancourt. Some of these towns accelerated and took advantage of the transformation processes of population in favor of the middle classes and then the upper classes, in Levallois-Perret, for instance. Other towns may have seen the arrival of upper and middle classes but tried to retain small proportions of middle and working class inhabitants by implementing policies favoring home ownership or by managing town centers. They paid more attention to keeping social housing or to facilitating home ownership, as I mentioned. -There are a few very wealthy towns with very wealthy inhabitants where there are few inequalities. But in large cities, Neuilly-sur-Seine being the archetype of this phenomenon, there are both very wealthy people as well as poorer populations. At the other end of the spectrum, there is Montreuil, in the east, in Seine-Saint-Denis, where there are relatively poor populations, not as poor as in the poorer areas in France, and relatively wealthy populations. So we have two kinds of inequalities. We have to understand that we should draw a typology of inequalities. The inequalities present in some wealthy municipalities are not the same as in poor municipalities. In contrast, we could have very poor towns with almost only poor people and very few inequalities because the territory is homogeneous. It is also true for Paris. If you study the northeastern arrondissements, based on data which is not necessarily made public, there are entire areas with poverty rates equivalent to those of provincial towns. One arrondissement has 200 000 people, which is more than Tours has. And within an arrondissement, even if we may not have extreme average poverty rates, we may have pockets of poverty even in arrondissements not that far from the center, a couple of kilometers away from the center of Paris. We have important pockets of poverty equivalent to what can be found in the north of France. It is also the case in Seine-Saint-Denis, with higher poverty rates. -The territorial reconfiguration in terms of governance in favor of spaces which integrate towns from the inner suburbs, I am not convinced by that. For certain types of infrastructure, such as transportation systems, or others, such as equipment for large cultural or sports events, on this scale, it should give urban territories more breathing room, and thus facilitate redistributions and relocations to integrate more towns from the inner suburbs. But when it comes to population dynamics, given the high residential selectivity of the real estate market, we are not there yet. -The level of the metropolis and the administrative division and the administrative divisions in France in general is not that important. It is fascinating to the elites, especially from Paris. It may have consequences, but only marginally, on the evolution of employment and employment policies, on fiscal policies and income redistribution. We talk about an issue which is important, when it comes to urban planning, construction, transportation infrastructure, etc., but which will not help reduce social inequalities in the country.